Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Final)

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl, is a murder mystery novel following the adventures of main character Blue van Meer. Daughter of a traveling professor, she spends most of her life on the road, a modern day nomad. She and her father settle in each location only for a semester of schooling, and then uproot and drive to the next location, all the while giving Blue a first rate ‘on-the-road’ education.
The story begins when she and her father settle down for her entire senior year of high school, and much of the book documents her exploits as she tries to fit in with the students there, and for the first time, makes some friends. The curious nature and subsequent death of friend/teacher Hanna Schneider during a non-school camping trip sparks the main plot of the story. Blue must overcome a tangled web of deception and apparent coincidence as she attempts to unravel the death of this teacher, and, ultimately, the disappearance of her father.
I am not normally a fan of murder mysteries, and certainly would never read this book on my own if not for this class. However, I found it brilliantly written and constructed, aside from a few points in the immediate beginning of the book. The authors dense, never-ending forest of metaphors and references make for an intellectually stimulating (and challenging) read. It also adds a curious new aspect to the diction that I have yet to see anywhere else: each person reads the book slightly differently. As it is neigh on impossible to be familiar with every single reference in the story (some of them are made up, for instance…), each person will relate to the book in different ways with different background knowledge. Excerpts that made me chuckle with underlying humor seemed to make no sense to some of my classmates, telling me that they were unaware of what Pessl was referring to in the text.
Overall: a solid read, and something I’m glad I was made to look into.